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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Hungary: 'In Hungary, Jewish Is a Derogatory Term'

The Hungarians were and still are anti-Semitic. It’s not pleasant. I’ve lived there for 15 years, but it’s only in the past two years that I’ve started to feel it, and it’s starting to bother me. There’s a word in Hungarian, zsidiozm, that’s said about someone or something Jewish. For the Hungarians it’s a curse word. Like “nigger.” I’m a makeup artist at a club, and once a few girls who worked with me came and asked whether I would do them. A guy at the club said, “Probably their Jew-boss was too tightfisted to pay for their makeup” – using that derogatory word. I cringed. didn’t react at that moment, but afterward I thought that there were so many things I could have said. It’s possible that if I’d told him I myself was Jewish he would have been embarrassed, but there was no longer any point. I’m not sure it was really spoken as an insult ... but they don’t really know who or what a Jew is, it’s just something they hear.